


Our Anchor

by SleepsWithCoyotes



Category: Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Archival Fic, Community: oddible, Don't copy to another site, Multi, Polyamory, V-Sided Polyamorous Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-11
Updated: 2020-07-11
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:54:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25207291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SleepsWithCoyotes/pseuds/SleepsWithCoyotes
Summary: This is the zone in which you can have me.
Relationships: Elizabeth Midford/Ciel Phantomhive, Sebastian Michaelis/Ciel Phantomhive
Comments: 4
Kudos: 41





	Our Anchor

**Author's Note:**

> Back to working on moving stuff over from the spambot...this one's from 2009, for the oddible community, with a song prompt from Lackthereof - "You Can"

Her tea parties have changed since she was a girl--she entertains lords and ladies now, not nervous maids under the assessing gaze of her mother--but her favorite guest remains the same. Ciel, sitting across from her at the little table in the garden, which has been spread with an immaculate white cloth and antique china, silver and glass. Everything spotless. He's bored-- _she_ can tell, even if the white-haired old general at his side cannot--but the hangdog resentment never makes it to his face anymore. It's the very stillness of his expression that tells her he'd rather be anywhere else, and she tells herself it'd be different if it were just the two of them, Lord and Lady Phantomhive, passing a leisurely afternoon together.

Ciel doesn't look up when Sebastian, who has been unobtrusively keeping cups filled all afternoon, quietly running back and forth between the garden and the manor, leans over his shoulder to murmur into his ear. One brow twitches up fractionally, but the real change is in the spark that leaps into Ciel's eye, intent and alive and _focused_ , as if he's been entirely absent until this very moment.

When he rises to make his excuses, he meets the eyes of the others first--Lady Wharton and her charming niece, dear old General Forrester and his pretty young wife--but it's her gaze he holds, his own briefly softening in apology.

"You must excuse me," he says, a slim, straight figure in the darkest of blues, nearly black. "I'm afraid something's come up that won't wait."

Though she's never enquired too deeply into his work--Ciel doesn't like it, wants her not to be troubled by the things he does for the Crown--she knows what that means. He'll be gone in minutes, and she just might hear the faint clatter of his carriage as it leaves, as _he_ leaves without a backward glance. If he returns tonight at all, he'll apologize again, with more politeness than sincerity. Her friends, after all, are all very safe, don't interest him in the slightest.

Already she can see old Tanaka approaching from the house, come to take Sebastian's place, and she smiles as brightly as she knows how as she says, "I hope it's nothing serious."

"No," Ciel says, and for the first time all morning, he smiles, a sharp, tight smirk like the grin of a hound with a fox's brush in its jaws. "Just some old business that needs to be wrapped up quickly."

He looks excited, not worried, and that's a good thing, isn't it?

She glances once at Sebastian regardless before they leave, says nothing but knows she's heard. _Take care of him_.

Sebastian's smile is much like her husband's, but with less teeth in it. This time.

_Of course_.

She doesn't sigh when she turns back to her guests, keeps her worry to herself. There's nothing to worry _about_. Sebastian will be with him, after all. Sebastian is _always_ with him.

"More tea, my lady?" Tanaka asks, purely by way of distraction. She's grateful for that, too.

"Yes," she says lightly, not watching as Ciel strides away, his black shadow trailing silently in his wake. "Thank you."

***

She doesn't wait up for him--it's days sometimes before he returns--but he comes to her anyway before he turns in himself, and she wakes as he settles at the side of her bed. He's dressed for town, not a stitch out of place, but even in the gloom she can tell he's fresh from the bath, not the road, the faint smell of soap still clinging to him.

"Lizzie?" he asks softly, and she smiles, hums an affirmative, and reaches sleepily for his hands. They're as cold as ever despite the bath he's just had, and she presses them together, chafes them gently with her own. Whatever stains may have been there before, they're invisible now. Her Ciel has always been mindful.

"Ciel. Did everything go all right?"

"Of course," he says, charmingly confident, as if he can't conceive of a world where his plans don't fall perfectly into place. "It was only a meeting with an old friend, nothing to worry about."

He's not so careful of his expressions in the dark, but she can see by the long spill of moonlight through the window the satisfied curl of his mouth, the glitter of his eye beneath the heavy drape of his lashes. The curve of his smile is still fierce, but now it's triumphant as well.

"Good," she says, giving his hands an encouraging squeeze. He never brings these 'old friends' of his around for dinner, and she never surprises any of them in her husband's study, talking quietly but seriously until they notice her at the door. She's happy for him all the same, because with every meeting, a weight seems to lift from his shoulders, and when Ciel is happy, the entire estate seems to breathe easier. Even Sebastian can't remain unaffected, slinking around like a purring cat for days. "We're not going to need new cutlery, are we?" she asks, because she isn't _blind_. She's not _stupid_.

It must have been a very good meeting indeed. Ciel actually laughs, his hands tightening briefly on hers.

"Not this time, though Sebastian wasn't at all impressed with the quality of his tea service," Ciel says, shaking his head.

When he bends over to kiss her, she leans up towards him, smiling against the affectionate press of his lips, there and gone. He always comes to her when he returns, wouldn't dream of letting her sleep in uncertainty. He is here, and safe, and unharmed, and she has absolutely nothing to worry about. He never stays on nights like these; he wouldn't think it right.

She thinks she will wait for tomorrow herself to tell him she's sent for the doctor, that there may not be any need for him to visit her room at all, at least for a little while. Not that she would ever say it like that; she's become a Phantomhive herself, is good at keeping other people's secrets.

"Well," she says playfully, "what do you expect? The Phantomhive butler would be ashamed to give less than his best."

He keeps her Ciel safe, occasionally makes him happy. She doesn't need to know anything else.

***

Ciel is wide-eyed with shock when she tells him, but not displeased. Not afraid. "An heir?" he says softly, one hand resting lightly on her stomach, his other arm curled so carefully around her, it's as if he fears she might break. "Truly?"

"I spoke with the doctor this morning," she says, smiling at his still-dazed expression. "But it might be a girl."

For an instant his face goes hunted, but when he moves closer to her, glancing nervously left and right, he mutters, "Don't let your mother hear you talk like that. _Ever_ ," he adds, and she laughs. She almost hopes it will be a girl; her mother would love to have a granddaughter to spoil, to show another little girl how to hold her first foil and hit her first target.

Ciel's hand still rests against her belly, his palm warming slowly through the satin of her dress. "He never said," he mumbles, so quietly she almost doesn't hear him.

She pretends _not_ to hear him, because even if she knows who he means, she can't for the life of her guess what he means by it. Why would Sebastian know before she did, and why should he be the one to tell Ciel?

"But...you're happy?" she asks, just to be sure. "I know we haven't talked about it--"

"Of course I'm happy," he says, his smile gentle, oddly grateful. "Where would the Crown be without its Phantomhives?"

"Ciel! I meant about being a _father_ ," she chides him, rolling her eyes even as he laughs, clearly teasing her.

"Ah, yes. One more thing to cross off my list."

"Oh? It was on the schedule, was it?" she teases him back, knowing how he feels about Sebastian's rigidly regimented timetables.

"Mm. Before I can die content," he says, kissing her cheek, and she forgives him his teasing then, forgives him all of it.

***

She watches them sometimes, Ciel and Sebastian, while she pretends to be busy with her correspondence or with the books Sebastian acquires for her, his taste as impeccably thoughtful in this as in everything. They don't often watch her, not while they are together, but the slight is neither personal nor intended. No matter how focused they appear to be on other things, sometimes the only thing that exists for each of them is each other.

Sebastian is still quite pleased with himself, even now, days after the _meeting_ that had dragged Ciel away from her tea party. She almost wonders if that smile has become permanent; even Maylene's destruction of an entire stack of china merits barely an eye-twitch, and he seems almost cheerful as he bends Finny's garden shears into unlikely shapes before handing them politely back. If he seems more solicitous to Ciel than ever--bending close to ask if his master is ready to dine, hovering always just over his shoulder--Ciel isn't snapping at the man or ordering him away.

Fatherhood must agree with him; she has never seen Ciel so relaxed, so nearly at peace.

She doesn't mean to come upon them in the hall, doubts very much they mean to be discovered, but there they are, Sebastian smoothing a wayward strand from Ciel's face--caressing his cheek, really, but some of the secrets she keeps are from herself--and Ciel doesn't knock his hand away.

"I suppose there can't be more than one left, then," Ciel says with a faint smirk, oddly fond. "Really, you shouldn't have."

"I'm sure I don't know what you mean," Sebastian replies, his look of perfect innocence perfectly false.

"How long have you known where he was? You didn't have to wait. I never asked for that."

Sebastian's smiles--his real ones--have always been a little unsettling. They remind her of her husband's when he comes to her in the dead of night, freshly-scrubbed or smelling of midnight and empty roads, drowsy and satiated in a way she's never quite been able to give him. The smile of a hunter contemplating a meal well-caught.

"What would happen," Sebastian purrs slowly, leaning close, "if the butler of the Phantomhives couldn't anticipate his master's goals? _All_ of them?"

"Hmph," Ciel says, but he's grinning slightly, tense as a hound begging to be loosed on a hare. "I hope you don't expect a bonus."

Sebastian chuckles, deep and soft. "I already have that," he says, his gloved hand cupping Ciel's cheek.

She turns away before she sees what happens next, not because she doesn't want to see but because she already knows what they will look like. She isn't stupid, and she's _never_ been blind. It's just one of the things they don't talk about, like the letters he gets with the Queen's own seal, and the 'old friends' he only meets once, and where he goes in such a hurry when Sebastian calls him away.

They all have a piece of him--the Queen, Sebastian, the men he hunts with such tireless determination--but she has a piece of his heart as well. One of the first, from when it was still whole.

It's enough to get to sleep on, and she smiles into her pillow, one hand on her stomach, and dreams of a day when the largest part of him will belong to someone else, someone he can love without any secrets behind it at all.


End file.
